Perspective And Other Optical Illusions

The evolution of perspective in art, science and mathematics.

The science of perspective has informed the representational and decorative arts since their inception, and its gradual perfection during the renaissance was as important an event as any of the other mathematical and scientific developments of the time. This little book will cover the evolution of visual perspective and then move on to a discussion of how and why illusions work in the first place.

Questioning the idea of what we see is actually what is out there becomes the theme of the second half of the book, where further optical illusions are employed to suggest to the reader that the world they perceive is in fact a complex product of their brain, constructed from the sensory data. The book closes with various magical, theological and atmospheric illusions and a further philosophical discussion on the nature of reality.